1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sun shades or sunshields, especially to vehicle windshield sun shades for motor vehicles when parked.
2. Description of Prior Art
A vehicle windshield sun shade or sunshield is used to block sun rays passing through the windshield of a motor vehicle. Measurements have shown that under direct exposure to sun rays passing through the windshield, the temperature of the dashboard, the steering wheel and other interiors of a parked car can reach 180.degree.-200.degree. F. when the outside temperature is 100.degree. F. Measurements have also shown that with an opaque sheet's blocking, the temperatures of vehicle interiors may be reduced 70.degree.-80.degree. F. Therefore, it is important to provide a satisfactory means to protect the front interior of a parked vehicle against sun rays and blaze.
Since the 1950s, many different windshield sun shades or sunshields for motor vehicles have been put forward. They can principally be categorized into several different groups according to their shading style, including these listed in the following table:
__________________________________________________________________________ TYPES OF WINDSHIELD SUN SHADE OR SHIELD FOR MOTOR VEHICLES Group Style of Shade Inventor Publication Date __________________________________________________________________________ 1 Sheet "Hints from model garage" 5/93 P. 181, May 1953, POPULAR SCIENCE George P. Flanagan U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,461 4/75 2 Vertical Fold Abraham Levy U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,396 5/80 Roger H. Richards U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,039 3/87 Abraham Levy U.S. Pat. No. 4,805,955 2/89 3 Horizontal Fold Donald F. Acenbrack U.S. Pat. No. 5,044,686 9/91 Ezra D. Eskandry U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,335 6/89 Horst Moil U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,920 8/90 4 Parallelogram Lawrence D. Siegler U.S. Pat. No. 4,727,920 3/88 George Yadeger U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,334 6/87 5 Triangle Fold Terill I. Nederveld U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,994 10/88 6 Accordion Pleats Arthur J. Phillips U.S. Pat. No. 4,775,180 10/88 7 Roller Shade Mentora D. Eubanks U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,980 4/88 8 Venetian Blind Kenneth D. Goebel U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,711 6/90 9 Window Curtain Mozaffar Ebrahimzadeh U.S. Pat. No. 4,647,102 3/87 10 Outside Cover Amnon Hanania U.S. Pat. No. 4,903,748 2/90 11 Convex Fan Type Ying-Chao Ruan The present invention __________________________________________________________________________
Among the above existing windshield shades or sunshields the accordion style rectangular foldable shade described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,202,396, 4,652,039 and 4,805,955 (Group 2), and the sheet shade made of foil-insulation multilayer material (Group 1) are most widely used. Both the foldable rectangular shade and the multilayer sheet shade are basically a sheet of shading material of a windshield size. When not in use, they are folded or rolled up for storage. When in use, they are stretched to their full length in a horizontal direction and placed behind the windshield. A common problem of using these types of sun shades is that it is inconvenient to stretch them to fully cover the windshield as well as to remove them, because the space between the windshield and the driver's seat inside a vehicle is very limited. The situations may even be worse for the elderly and handicapped, and those drivers who have difficulty reaching the span of the windshield. Also, these shades usually fail to cover the two bottom corner regions of the windshield, because their two sides tend to shrink towards the middle of the shade due to the shrinking tension of the sheet material itself. The foil surface of certain types of these shades raises a further problem. That is when they are stretched to their full length and set behind the windshield, the surface resembles that of a piece of wrinkled metal, which tends to diminish the aesthetic value of the exterior of the vehicle. Further, sunlight reflected by the surface is not visually pleasant to people and may cause passersby to be temporarily blinded which may result in parking lot accidents. Furthermore, hundreds of millions of motor vehicles exist today, and many more are being produced. If a huge number of vehicles use these shades, which reflect sunlight in all directions, they would not improve the harmony of the human environment, which has already seriously been disturbed by modern industry's undesirable side effects.
In this application for U.S. Letter Patent, I am presenting a new style of windshield sun shade, as listed in Group 11 in the table mentioned before. The new shade is a convex accordion pleated hand fan-like device for covering the windshield from behind. This invention is highly efficient in blocking sun rays; most convenient to use, it has good geometrical factors which lend to its relatively low surface sun ray densities and facilitate the release of heat absorbed from sun rays; in addition, it has a quite pleasant appearance and can even beautify vehicles.